Comcast delivered first-quarter results slightly better than Wall Street expectations, but its shares fell in pre-market trading Thursday.
Total revenue was $29.9 billion, a decline of a fraction of a percent from the year-earlier quarter. Adjusted earnings per share rose to $1.09 from $1.04.
Downturns in domestic advertising and residential broadband unsettled investors, with Comcast shares slipping more than 3% in pre-market trading. The company’s ad business, like those of its peers, has suddenly become vulnerable in the current macroeconomic climate, which has seen uncertainty due to President Trump’s on-and-off tariffs.
Revenue in the Media division inched up 1% to $6.4 billion, but profits surged due to lower expenses. Adjusted EBITDA hit $1 billion, up 21.5%. The drop in expenses, the company said, was primarily due to lower sports programming costs at Peacock and its domestic television networks. One worrying sign was domestic advertising’s 7% slump to $1.9 billion, a decline the company bluntly attributed to “lower revenue at our networks.”
Peacock revenue went up 16% to $1.2 billion, with adjusted EBITDA losses improving by $424 million from the year-ago quarter.
Wobbles in the long-steady broadband business continued, with the decrease in residential broadband customers tripling from a year ago. The total fell by 183,000 to 29.2 million. The company shed 427,000 residential video customers in the quarter (a slight improvement from the loss of 487,000 a year ago) to end the period at 12.1 million. Wireless continues to be a bright spot, with the company posting the most wireless line additions it has had in two years, reaching 8.15 million.
The Studios unit rode carryover business from Wicked and Nosferatu, helping EBITDA climb 22% to $298 million. It was otherwise a sleepy quarter, with Focus Features misfire Black Bag the most notable wide release. Revenue inched up 3% to $2.8 billion.
Later this year, Comcast is aiming to close its spinoff of most of its cable TV network portfolio. The stand-alone company will be publicly traded and owned by Comcast shareholders, but it will relieve the main company’s balance sheet of some of the downward momentum of traditional TV. The management team sees SpinCo (as it is still temporarily named) as a cash-generating vehicle of potential M&A, given the stress that cord-cutting has put on the legacy business.
